Shake- My (wonderful) husband introduced me to Shake while we were dating about a year ago. Shake is an app for writing contracts, which is an amazing help for freelancers and small businesses of all kinds. All you have to do is fill in the blanks for your basic info (your name, clients name, date of project, price, etc) and the app will put it all into a formal, legal contract. You can export as a pdf or have it sent and signed right through the app. This was a lifesaver for me when I first started doing a lot of freelance photography!

Mint- I was really skeptical about Mint at first because everyone was recommending it, but to me it was very confusing at first and made me feel more overwhelmed than organized. I couldn't find an option I liked better, so I stuck with it and after the first month or two I got the hang of how it works and now I would never be able to budget without it. It links to all of your bank accounts and helps you make savings goals. The one issue I have had is keeping track of purchases I make for business that will be reimbursed. I solved that by adding an expense budget for reimbursements, but making the total = 0. By the end of the month, if I've been fully reimbursed for everything I spent on a client's behalf, it should add up to 0.

Square Cash- It seems like most people are using Venmo these days for transferring cash, but I much prefer Square Cash. To me it feels simpler, and I never want my transactions to be public anyways. The biggest benefit of Square Cash, though, is that you can send money to anyone - even if they don't have the app.

Trello / Notes - I find myself constantly taking notes because my memory for details is blehhh not that great. I used to use Trello a lot, and I still recommend it! It's an online or phone app, so all of your info is always on your phone and computer, and you can include links, full attachments, photos, whatever you want in your lists. It works sort of like Pinterest where you have "boards" for each category and then lists within each board and details within each list. I'm not sure why I gradually stopped using Trello, but now I just use my Apple Notes App, organized by email address so that I can keep Crea things separate from Work things, separate from Personal things.

Msecure - This is the best way I've ever found to store passwords. I have about 1.3 billion passwords to keep track of, and I'm sure that's the same for most freelancers, or anyone these days. Msecure does have a small one time fee to download the app for each device, but once you have it you can sync from phone to computer, categorize your passwords and keep other notes with each one. You just have to remember one main password that you remember to login each time you want to use the app. I feel a lot better knowing my passwords are secure ever since I started using it!

There are 3 other apps I just downloaded that I'm excited to try:

Gather - I honestly don't know much about this one, but it looks like a cool way to organize events instead of the dreaded group texts or the never-checked Facebook events. Has anyone tried it?

Tailwind - I sort of tried Tailwind a couple of years ago, but rumor has it, they now have a feature that allows you to schedule your Instagram posts! How amazingggg would that be?!

Medium- I just opened an account on Medium (actually apparently I already had an account that I forgot about... hah). It's a social network specifically for writers. I've read some very interesting and/or moving pieces on there and got inspired to write my own!